Open Letter to Those Who Disagree With Scalia, but “Respect’ his “Opinions”

I would just like to point out to all the people saying laudatory things about Scalia, on the whole liberal respect of other opinions grounds, that he wasn’t just some guy with bad opinions–like a racist, but otherwise lovable uncle.

He was someone who was in an actual position of power over actual people’s lives. How he wielded said power had tremendous consequences for actual people, like literally life or death consequences in things like decisions about the death penalty.

He used that power to try to make sure that torture was legal, to argue that there was no constitutional right not to be executed just because you were factually innocent, to uphold the right of states to jail LGBT people for consensual sexual acts, to overturn prohibitions on sex discrimination, and deny women the right to make decisions about their bodies.

This is not about respecting someone with whom you disagree, this about resenting the actual damage that the reprehensible actions of a person did.

It isn’t zany, but admirable when someone argues there is nothing to prohibit states from flogging people or amputating ears when said person has the actual power to determine whether such a thing does or does not happen.

So no, no one has to respect his brilliance (which is questionable anyways, since in spite of the fact that he was a talented writer if anyone who was not a Supreme Court justice uttered some of his beliefs they almost certainly would be considered unserious or ludicrous, not a gifted purveyor of legal reasoning, by the same people singing his praise. This is to say nothing of the fact that he spent much of his time pondering why Satan had stopped tossing goats off of cliffs), when said brilliance was used for evil.

His actions had consequences for millions of people, I don’t see why he shouldn’t be one of them.